Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => Aurora Suggestions => Topic started by: letsdance on September 05, 2014, 03:25:30 PM
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i'll explain my problem with an example. in the ship designer i design a ship that has 25,500 tons without engine. i picked an empty ship with one terraforming module, and 1 fuel storage (50,000 litres). but it doesn't matter how the ship looks like (instead of the terraforming module you can use total 500 HS of war tonnage if you prefer). total ship size does not matter for this either, but for ships below 5,000 tons it can be even more efficient to use one larger (higher HS) engine to also take advantage of the fuel modifier (see my other thread concerning engine efficiency for that).
then i have to decide on the engine. my technology is solid-core anti-matter drives and fuel consumption 0.25 litres per power hour. the relative results will be the same if you have different technologies. i consider 2 different engine designs, both HS 50 (the relative results are the same if you use smaller engines):
#1 engine power x0.25 (power 500) - cost 625 to research and 62.5 to build - using 2 of them
#2 engine power x0.35 (power 700) - cost 1225 to research and 122.5 to build
note: you can use ANY technologies for test designs, i just happen to have these right now - the relative result is the same
two engines #1 cost about the same to build as one engine #2. now lets compare the ships speed and range (which tells us how much fuel it uses) using either 2 engines #1 or one engine #2:
#1: speed 1,633 kms, range 75b km, total ship size 30,600 tons
#2: speed 1,245 kms, range 35b km, total ship size 28,100 tons
surprise! #1 is cheaper to research and costs the same to build. but the ship is faster and needs less than half the fuel (more than double range). shouldn't the more powerful engine make the ship faster? (or at least, give any advantage)
well if we want a faster ship, lets try doubling the engine number, now we're either using 4 engines #1 or 2 engines #2:
#1: 2,805 kms, range 65b km, total ship size 35,650 tons
#2: 2,287 kms, range 32b km, total ship size 30,600 tons
still the same... double the number of engines again to 8 for #1 and 4 for #2:
#1: 4,366 kms, range 50b km, total ship size 45,800 tons
#2: 3,921 kms, range 27b km, total ship size 35,650 tons
that's pretty fast already and still the only advantages of the faster engine is a lower total ship size and less termal signature(2,800 compared to 4,000). the difference in ship size hardly matters compared to the obvious advantages.
lets double the number of engines again to 16 for #1 and 8 for #2:
#1: 6,060 kms, range 35b km, total ship size 66,000 tons
#2: 6,106 kms, range 22b km, total ship size 45,800 tons
finally!! by now the #1 ship is over 60% just engines, but it is no more faster than #2. though it still needs 30% less fuel, and the research cost was half as much.
the result is pretty much the same for any ship size and power multiplier. a higher power multiplier makes the ship only faster, if engines are at least 50 % of the whole ship.
to sum it up: i would like to see more reason for using more powerful engines. a simple solution would be to make all engines of same size have the same build costs, independent from the power multiplier. this way, engine stacking at least makes your ships more expensive.
there is another problem: comparing examples 1 and 2 doubling the amount of engines, i only need 10% more fuel to travel the same distance with 75% higher speed. if we compare examples 1 and 4, the speed is about 4 (5) times higher and the fuel needed increased by about 100% (50%) for engine #1 (#2). now that's an efficient power vs fuel usage ratio! there's hardly a reason to build slow ships if we can make them twice as fast by only needing 10 % more fuel.
the problem comes from aurora putting very different weight on speed vs fuel considerations. while in the case of using multiple engines you get higher speed for very little fuel, it's extremely expensive in the case of using more powerful engines.
i suggest to reduce the impact of the engine power multiplier on fuel usage. currently, every 100% increase in power increases the fuel per EPH by 566%. that means you need 11 times as much fuel to travel the same distance in half the time. i suggest to increase the fuel per EPH only by 200% for each 100% increase in power. that still means, to travel the same distance in half the time you need 4 times as much fuel. or you can save 75% fuel by using engines of half the power.
this would make engine stacking much less efficient and give higher power engines more use. it would also need some testing to find out if my suggested values are good and how it influences total fuel needed. i am willing to help if possible.
i also suggest remove the fuel consumption tech line, or make it much more expensive (in the way that you get the lower multipliers much later). better engines already help you save fuel because they increase ship size less for the same engine power. and you also have the advantage of getting fuel more easily at higher tech levels. keeping a big fleet supplied with fuel should be a real challenge!
finally, fuel weight should be increased. i guess the weight for the fuel is included in the HS of fuel tanks (that's exactly 1kg per litre). currently, it's not much of a problem to give all ships the range that you want them to have. even with my suggestions above, fuel tanks just don't need enough hull size to really matter. trippling or quadrupling the HS of fuel storage components would make range considerations more important. it seems reasonable that such powerful fuel as used in trans-newtonian engines have higher density than our modern fuels. this suggestion is independent from the rest.
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JacenHan pointed out that more engines mean higher chance for engine explosions.
i'm undecided, or rather, i'm lacking the knowledge to judge this. but more engines also mean more total HTK and it doesn't matter as much if you lose one of them. higher speed means better evasion and more tactical options. besides this, the advantages of using a higher number of lower power engines are so big, that you can put more armor (or shields) on your ship and still be faster. but then it also becomes more expensive.
if larger ships were easier to hit it would also solve or mitigate the problem.
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my technology is solid-core anti-matter drives and fuel consumption 0.25 litres per power hour. the relative results will be the same if you have different technologies.
So in short you are using extremely low powered engines and extremely advanced technology levels that pretty much never is an actual choice.
No one would design a warship with that tech level and speeds of only 1000-6000 km/s, so your entire example is one of theory and fantasy only that never really will be relevant to warship design in the game.
lets double the number of engines again to 16 for #1 and 8 for #2:
#1: 6,060 kms, range 35b km, total ship size 66,000 tons
#2: 6,106 kms, range 22b km, total ship size 45,800 tons
finally!! by now the #1 ship is over 60% just engines, but it is no more faster than #2. though it still needs 30% less fuel, and the research cost was half as much.
You also kind of forgot that option 1 requires a 44% larger military shipyard... And should be more expensive + time consuming to build.
Also research cost of components is negligible at the tech levels when you have 0.25 litres per power hour and solid core AM drives...
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to sum it up: i would like to see more reason for using more powerful engines.
I don't know how your games usually progress, by in my case I always have problems with the shipyard capacity and I always design commercial ships to the maximum size allowed by my shipyards (bar some very special circumstances). Since the space is limited, more powerful engines are usually the only way for me to increase the speed of my vessels (at the price of slightly larger production costs, much larger fuel consumption and more limited range). As speed in incredibly important for the growth of your empire, especially early game, there are plenty of reasons to build more powerful engines, even if this increases the costs of the ships. This is especially true since for practically anything other than freighters the engine costs are quite low compered to the total cost of the ship, usually being in the vicinity of 5%-12% of the total ship cost. (For commercial vessels; for military ones it's a somewhat different story.)
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So in short you are using extremely low powered engines and extremely advanced technology levels
its the same for all tech levels. it's the same for all engines power and fuel usage multipliers. and there's not only military ships in the game.
you can just half all ranges (adjusted to fuel consumption 0.5) or quarter them (adjusted to fuel consumption 1.0). then half all speeds (adjusted to internal confined fusion drive) or set them to 30 % (adjusted to ion drives). double all speed values while reducing range to 9 % (adjusted to engine powers 0.5 and 0.7); or quadruple them and reduce range to 0.8 % (adjusted to engine powers 1.0 and 1.4). you can also half the ships size and use only half the number of engines, or quarter both. it's all the same.
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and there's not only military ships in the game.
For balancing issues only military ships are important.
Civilian shipping lines can handle all your colony and building lifting without costing a single drop of fuel or industry to build. I promise you zero fuel and industry cost is vastly more efficient then any design you can dream up ;)
half all ranges.... half all speeds... half the ships size... it's all the same.
Huh? Changing the ranges, speeds and size of ships is not the same example anymore, it's a different example with different values.
Especially when you take everything else into account like armor which is a bigger penalty for big ships if your level is bad and so on. Or mandatory components like the bridge that will add x tons instead of x% regardless of how small or big you make the ship.
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I always have problems with the shipyard capacity and I always design commercial ships to the maximum size allowed by my shipyards (bar some very special circumstances). Since the space is limited, more powerful engines are usually the only way for me to increase the speed of my vessels.
give me an example and i'll give you the solution. what tech level (engines, fuel consumption, minimum engine power modifier) are you talking about, what's the total tonnage of your commercial ship (what ship are we talking about anyways?) and what engines are you using?
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For balancing issues only military ships are important.
i don't agree, but it's the same for military ships anyways.
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give me an example and i'll give you the solution. what tech level (engines, fuel consumption, minimum engine power modifier) are you talking about, what's the total tonnage of your commercial ship (what ship are we talking about anyways?) and what engines are you using?
You know I was thinking about providing you one, but... what for? I mean, my whole point what that your making an argument made purely on production and research costs. And as far as it goes you're right, you can make ships cheaper and faster using lower powered engines. But you're not taking into the account the situation in which the ships are being designed. I'm talking here about economy, politics, time constrains, shipyard and mineral availability, fluff, role-playing, fuel availability, distances and other things. To put it simply, I never play Aurora as a single player game, I'm always role-playing multiple nations and in such situation shaving 5% construction costs of my ship is usually poor second (or third) to all the other considerations like a need to get my ship to that cool planet sooner than the other power can do so, so I can claim it. And that's just one example. To be honest, as soon as my fuel shortages are solved, I always use 0.5 power commercial engines, simply because whoever has faster ships has advantage in establishing his or her empire, which is very important when you're playing six power blocks starting in the same system all competing for the same resources and all being afraid of being attacked if they cannot build a big enough navy fast enough, which requires them to quickly tap the needed mineral deposits and build as much as possible as soon as possible, without waiting for larger yards to build cheaper ships.
But that's how I play my game and why I use more powerful engines. If you're playing your game differently then yes, you may find low powered engines much more useful and compelling - which is the beauty of Aurora, as it allows all of us to play the game the way we like.
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I'm talking here about economy, politics, time constrains, shipyard and mineral availability, fluff, role-playing, fuel availability, distances and other things.
economy, politics, fluff, role-playing... this thread is about improving game mechanics.
shipyard availability... yes thats an issue, but a small one, especially for commercial ships that can often be designed smaller without losing anything
mineral availability... less powerful engines need exactly the same minerals (amount and type)
fuel availability, distances... if that's bad it's one more reason to use less powerful engines
a need to get my ship to that cool planet sooner than the other power can do so, so I can claim it.
sounds like a faster design, that uses an engine which is quicker to research would support this. one more reason to optimize designs the way i described it.
as soon as my fuel shortages are solved, I always use 0.5 power commercial engines, simply because whoever has faster ships has advantage in establishing his or her empire
isn't it a bit boring, that you're using only one choice of the huge amount that the engine design offers? my suggestion is all about making more options interesting. it seems that might be an improvement also for your play style.
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letsdance, first you are ignoring size restrictions. Shipyards are not free, getting my 25% 1x engine designs to 50% 0.5x engines would require to expand my shipyards by 50%, which is nowhere near free, requiring a lot of population and resources. In fact, tonnage is the first thing that get fixed for any of my designs.
Second the fact that you use high tech engines for your example is relevant. Each engine has a limiting speed of a 100% engine design, which is directly proportional to the engine multiplier. Your ships pull 6kkm/s, what if I want 12kkm/s? You won't be able to reach it with these designs, and being faster than your opponent is a massive advantage in battle.
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you make some mistakes here.
this seems to look only at fuel use. otherwise you could use stronger smaller engines.
you have one fixed statt which is youre shipyard size, sure you can make it bigger but that has advantages as well as disadvantages.
so lets say you have a 300k shipyard.
just with one engine type you have now a function between engines and gain.
you could see the gain like speed * cargo - and max this function.
however costs and fuel use are interesting too. you might want to max thouse too.
now you could use different engines in this function too, smaller more powerfull engines, which make you faster.
they might even make the ship cheaper, but use more fuel.
maybe a huge slow ship can haul more over time, but you want to wait so long for a haul.
now there is something compleatly different military ships. thouse ships need armor, and the shipyard is much more expancive.
youre huge engines would add alot of armor-mass which might make them less effective.
im not sure about repairs with thouse huge engine, and how they work with engeneering spaces.
huge ships make youless difficult to hit and scann too.
so this is a very difficult question.
but i have to agree, the fuel consumption advantages of huge engines are a bit too strong.
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this seems to look only at fuel use. otherwise you could use stronger smaller engines.
maybe you should read my post. i'm looking mostly at speed. the saved fuel is just a convenient side effect.
maybe a huge slow ship can haul more over time, but you want to wait so long for a haul.
not it can't. never. it's alwas better to make it faster the way i described it. i wish it was different because i like the idea of huge slow ships. but it makes no sense in aurora. give me an example (tonnage/carge space, engines used) and i show you how to improve it.
letsdance, first you are ignoring size restrictions. Shipyards are not free, getting my 25% 1x engine designs to 50% 0.5x engines would require to expand my shipyards by 50%
i only see a 25 % expansion here, not 50. and you can also take advantage if you increase your engine % by only 10. but yes, you need either a bigger shipyard, or build a larger number of smaller designs (which is quite often a valid option without losing anything). it's worth it. for smaller ships (for example 3,000 tons) a 25 % increase in shipyard requirements doesn't really matter.
Each engine has a limiting speed of a 100% engine design, which is directly proportional to the engine multiplier. Your ships pull 6kkm/s, what if I want 12kkm/s? You won't be able to reach it with these designs
yes, using lower power engines makes only sense as long as your ship is less than 50 % engines. but that was exactly my point: every ship should be 50 % engines. that's boring.
Second the fact that you use high tech engines for your example is relevant.
no it's not. the effect is weaker, but it's still there. to end the discussion if it's relevant, i give you examples with an earlier tech warship. i will also consider maximum range this time.
the technology used is ion drives, fuel consumption 1 litre per power hour. in the ship designer i design a ship that has 8,000 tons, but so far without engine or fuel tanks. the tonnage can be anything, pick your favorite weapons. i consider 2 different engines (both HS 30):
#1 engine power x0.80 (power 480) - cost 1,920 to research and 192 to build
#2 engine power x1.25 (power 750) - cost 3,750 to research and 375 to build
two engines #1 + 100,000 litres fuel tank cost about the same to build as one engine #2 + 250,000 litres fuel tank. now lets compare the ships speed and range (which tells us how much fuel it uses) using either 2 engines #1 or one engine #2:
#1: speed 3,622 kms, range 4.7b km, total ship size 13,250 tons
#2: speed 3,456 kms, range 4.7b km, total ship size 10,850 tons
again, #2 is faster, cheaper to research and needs only 40 % fuel. yes, the speed gain is not much... but it shouldn't be there at all! the size increased by about 20 % which means you need a larger shipyard. but if we consider infrastructure you also need less fuel refineries, sorium and tankers (which also need shipyard capacity to build). it's also notable that this is a short range ship. if you need a higher range the advantage of the more efficient engines increases:
#1: speed 3,542 kms, range 18.6b km, total ship size 13,550 tons (fuel tanks 400,000)
#2: speed 3,218 kms, range 17.7b km, total ship size 11,650 tons (fuel tanks 1,000,000)
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two engines #1 + 100,000 litres fuel tank cost about the same to build as one engine #2 + 250,000 litres fuel tank. now lets compare the ships speed and range (which tells us how much fuel it uses) using either 2 engines #1 or one engine #2:
#1: speed 3,622 kms, range 4.7b km, total ship size 13,250 tons
#2: speed 3,456 kms, range 4.7b km, total ship size 10,850 tons
again, #2 is faster, cheaper to research and needs only 40 % fuel. yes, the speed gain is not much... but it shouldn't be there at all! the size increased by about 20 % which means you need a larger shipyard.
22% Larger shipyard to be exact, and this is for a gain in speed of 4.8%...
So lets compensate for this effect as you say by instead building 22% more ships of same tonnage. But that doesn't really help us because adding slipways is equally time and resource consuming as expanding the shipyard is ( if not more ).
but if we consider infrastructure you also need less fuel refineries, sorium and tankers (which also need shipyard capacity to build).
Tankers and sorium refiners are civilian designs, which is mostly irrelevant for how much Military shipyards you need for your military designs.
So if we are to summarize we can say that using more engine tonnage and lower powered engines instead is a valid choice that makes sense if you are not restricted by buildtime or shipyard/slipway size, but instead are having problems with range or fuel consumtion. Especially for civilian designs where it's cheap to expand the shipyard and fuel consumption is normally an important metric.
It is however not always an option. Especially for many smaller military designs ( fighters, FAC, offensive destroyers/scouts or beam warships ) that need so high speed that a low powered engine would leave them with zero mission tonnage.
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yes we can agree to that. but i would still like to see senseful ship designs that consist to a lesser percentage of engines.
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It is however not always an option. Especially for many smaller military designs ( fighters, FAC, offensive destroyers/scouts or beam warships ) that need so high speed that a low powered engine would leave them with zero mission tonnage.
Also adding more tonnage means more space devoted to armour plus a higher failure rate because that is related directly to size. Once you add more engineering you add more crew so crew quarters expand.
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Congratulations, you have found the some numerical evidence for efficient engines being good for commercial ships. I would however not go screaming about imballance, simply because the effect does not grow into the sky. What do I mean? This has to do with optimization, matematical optimization. Simply put, for certain requirements, like cary T mission tonnage to atleast range R. . . in the most efficient way after some target function, then there is an optimal value of engine power/fuel ballance to strike.
Let us first look at commercial shipping first. The effect of a cargo like freighter with negitible fuel usage (meaning we are already using low power multiplyers), is something allong the lines of: cargo*speed/cost. Now we can split this up a bit into main section and engine section parts. The speed can be split up into: engPowMult* engineSize /(engineSize +CargoSize). While cost can be put into something like: cargoCost + engCostMult*engineSize*engPowMult^X. Sadly I have not checked what this X is, but for military grade ships it is 1 and for commercial ships it appears to be above 1. This gives us the following target function to optimize:
f(engPowMult,engineSize) = cargo*engPowMult* engineSize /((engineSize +CargoSize)*(cargoCost + engCostMult*engineSize*engPowMult^X))
To optimize this, we first calculate the gradient:
df /d engPowMult = cargo * engineSize /((engineSize +CargoSize)*(cargoCost + engCostMult*engineSize*engPowMult^X)) -X * engCostMult*engineSize*engPowMult^(X-1)*cargo*engPowMult* engineSize /((engineSize +CargoSize)*(cargoCost + engCostMult*engineSize*engPowMult^X)^2)
df /d engineSize = cargo*engPowMult * ( 1 /((1 +CargoSize/engineSize)^2 * CargoSize/engineSize^2 *(cargoCost + engCostMult*engineSize*engPowMult^X))
- engPowMult^X * engCostMult*engineSize /((engineSize +CargoSize)*(cargoCost + engCostMult*engineSize*engPowMult^X)^2) )
The next step is then to set this gradient equal to the zero vector and solve the corrisponding equation system. We first reduce each equation quite a bit (no, I will not post the intermediate steps, there are too many)
for df /d engineSize = 0:
cargoCost/(((1 +CargoSize/engineSize) * CargoSize/engineSize^2 -engineSize)*engCostMult) = engPowMult^X
for df /d engPowMult = 0:
cargoCost = (X-1) * engCostMult*engineSize*engPowMult^X
We can then substitute the left hand side of the first equation into the second to solve for engineSize:
cargoCost = (X-1) * engCostMult*engineSize* cargoCost/(((1 +CargoSize/engineSize) * CargoSize/engineSize^2 -engineSize)*engCostMult)
0 = X * engineSize^4 - engineSize* CargoSize^2 + CargoSize
This is "just" a forth degree equation, so it will have several solutions which are locally extremal. From this point on, it can get a little bit ugly and depend on the actual value of X, so I will leave it at this for now. I might also have made some error somewhere allong the way, since it was all done by hand.
Anyway, the point is that there is an optimal setup for commercial shipping. For military ships there are optimizations too, but they are more complicated and there are many other possibly things to optimize on them.
You should also remember, that there are many things on military ships which scales (roughly) with size, such as armor, engineering, jump drives, cloaking, termal signature/speed and so on. Since these play in, putting on some extra engines might require you to put more of other stuff on, eating up most of the benifit. This is part of the reason why I usually design this part of military ships based on percentage of total tonnage.
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There obviously are some optimisation you can make, especially with commercial ships, but at the end of the day the most important thing is what constraints you have on your designs. What are your needs...
As Haji I play mostly in multiple nation games with no AI, only aliens are AI driven... sometimes not even that. In such campaigns it is rare that you can optimise designs because of other constraints such as fuel, minerals, workers, shipyards, money, time.. etc...
If just commercial designs at least had some maintenance cost, at least in money I would also have a reason (other than seriously outdated fuel guzzling ships) to upgrade or replace them.
For military ships there are soooo... many constraints, so building an optimised ship is nearly impossible. Fuel is often a very high constraint, especially with your main combat ships that tends to be both larger and fuel hungry, even if they consume less fuel per mass than a smaller ship it is a problem. In multi National game you can't often afford to keep all your ships stationary and just wait for combat. They need to patrol and make a presence to show strength of force when political pressure demands it. They need to go on fleet training operations etc...
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Some more comments on commercial ships... I rarely use anything but size 50 engines for those, see no reason not to unless it is a really small ship and I put a size 25 on them. Research and construction of commercial engines are so cheap anyway.
For military ships it is another issue entirely, most military ships is also much smaller than commercial ships since you are constrained by your shipyards. You need at least two if not three engines on military ships to reduce the overhead cost of maintenance, crew and risk in combat.
In general I have three or four different engine designs apart from small craft engines, so the usually are something like size 1,10-15, 20-25, 35-50... something like that depending on my naval yard sizes and doctrines. I also tend to reduce the power efficiency on bigger engines and increasing them on smaller engines. Which means in general that larger ships become cheaper but slower and smaller ships more expensive but faster, but that is part of my overall combat doctrines. Larger ships require more maintenance facilities and can be stationed at fewer places so they need more generous maintenance times and deployment times, smaller ships pack more punch but are more expensive per tonnage and drink more fuel but don't need to move around as much, unless they are scouts or recon ships which are designed differently.
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i'll explain my problem with an example. in the ship designer i design a ship that has 25,500 tons without engine. i picked an empty ship with one terraforming module, and 1 fuel storage (50,000 litres). but it doesn't matter how the ship looks like (instead of the terraforming module you can use total 500 HS of war tonnage if you prefer). total ship size does not matter for this either, but for ships below 5,000 tons it can be even more efficient to use one larger (higher HS) engine to also take advantage of the fuel modifier (see my other thread concerning engine efficiency for that).
then i have to decide on the engine. my technology is solid-core anti-matter drives and fuel consumption 0.25 litres per power hour. the relative results will be the same if you have different technologies. i consider 2 different engine designs, both HS 50 (the relative results are the same if you use smaller engines):
#1 engine power x0.25 (power 500) - cost 625 to research and 62.5 to build - using 2 of them
#2 engine power x0.35 (power 700) - cost 1225 to research and 122.5 to build
note: you can use ANY technologies for test designs, i just happen to have these right now - the relative result is the same
two engines #1 cost about the same to build as one engine #2. now lets compare the ships speed and range (which tells us how much fuel it uses) using either 2 engines #1 or one engine #2:
#1: speed 1,633 kms, range 75b km, total ship size 30,600 tons
#2: speed 1,245 kms, range 35b km, total ship size 28,100 tons
surprise! #1 is cheaper to research and costs the same to build. but the ship is faster and needs less than half the fuel (more than double range). shouldn't the more powerful engine make the ship faster? (or at least, give any advantage)
well if we want a faster ship, lets try doubling the engine number, now we're either using 4 engines #1 or 2 engines #2:
#1: 2,805 kms, range 65b km, total ship size 35,650 tons
#2: 2,287 kms, range 32b km, total ship size 30,600 tons
still the same... double the number of engines again to 8 for #1 and 4 for #2:
#1: 4,366 kms, range 50b km, total ship size 45,800 tons
#2: 3,921 kms, range 27b km, total ship size 35,650 tons
that's pretty fast already and still the only advantages of the faster engine is a lower total ship size and less termal signature(2,800 compared to 4,000). the difference in ship size hardly matters compared to the obvious advantages.
lets double the number of engines again to 16 for #1 and 8 for #2:
#1: 6,060 kms, range 35b km, total ship size 66,000 tons
#2: 6,106 kms, range 22b km, total ship size 45,800 tons
finally!! by now the #1 ship is over 60% just engines, but it is no more faster than #2. though it still needs 30% less fuel, and the research cost was half as much.
the result is pretty much the same for any ship size and power multiplier. a higher power multiplier makes the ship only faster, if engines are at least 50 % of the whole ship.
to sum it up: i would like to see more reason for using more powerful engines. a simple solution would be to make all engines of same size have the same build costs, independent from the power multiplier. this way, engine stacking at least makes your ships more expensive.
there is another problem: comparing examples 1 and 2 doubling the amount of engines, i only need 10% more fuel to travel the same distance with 75% higher speed. if we compare examples 1 and 4, the speed is about 4 (5) times higher and the fuel needed increased by about 100% (50%) for engine #1 (#2). now that's an efficient power vs fuel usage ratio! there's hardly a reason to build slow ships if we can make them twice as fast by only needing 10 % more fuel.
the problem comes from aurora putting very different weight on speed vs fuel considerations. while in the case of using multiple engines you get higher speed for very little fuel, it's extremely expensive in the case of using more powerful engines.
i suggest to reduce the impact of the engine power multiplier on fuel usage. currently, every 100% increase in power increases the fuel per EPH by 566%. that means you need 11 times as much fuel to travel the same distance in half the time. i suggest to increase the fuel per EPH only by 200% for each 100% increase in power. that still means, to travel the same distance in half the time you need 4 times as much fuel. or you can save 75% fuel by using engines of half the power.
this would make engine stacking much less efficient and give higher power engines more use. it would also need some testing to find out if my suggested values are good and how it influences total fuel needed. i am willing to help if possible.
i also suggest remove the fuel consumption tech line, or make it much more expensive (in the way that you get the lower multipliers much later). better engines already help you save fuel because they increase ship size less for the same engine power. and you also have the advantage of getting fuel more easily at higher tech levels. keeping a big fleet supplied with fuel should be a real challenge!
finally, fuel weight should be increased. i guess the weight for the fuel is included in the HS of fuel tanks (that's exactly 1kg per litre). currently, it's not much of a problem to give all ships the range that you want them to have. even with my suggestions above, fuel tanks just don't need enough hull size to really matter. trippling or quadrupling the HS of fuel storage components would make range considerations more important. it seems reasonable that such powerful fuel as used in trans-newtonian engines have higher density than our modern fuels. this suggestion is independent from the rest.
Commercial ships are in my opinion uninteresting because there you pretty much always want the biggest most fuel efficient engine you can fit into them and you have no maintenance facilities to worry about and expanding those yards are pretty cheap, as is researching them. That and commercial production costs usually concise of a fairly small part of your empire budget anyway.
Let's compare two military ships of equal size... we can NOT allow to compare ships of different size because if you expand your yard space then ALL new designs can use it so all designs MUST use the same constraints.
Furious Type A class Cruiser 10,000 tons 297 Crew 1452.6 BP TCS 200 TH 720 EM 0
3600 km/s Armour 4-41 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 6 PPV 53.97
Maint Life 2.49 Years MSP 499 AFR 145% IFR 2% 1YR 111 5YR 1672 Max Repair 180 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 9 months Flight Crew Berths 10
Hangar Deck Capacity 500 tons Magazine 90
360 EP (HS30) Ion Stardrive (2) Power 360 Fuel Use 49% Signature 360 Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 300,000 Litres Range 11.0 billion km (35 days at full power)
Twin Barrelled Pulse Laser Turret (7x2) Range 48,000km TS: 12000 km/s Power 6-4 RM 3 ROF 10 3 3 3 2 0 0 0 0 0 0
PDFC Fire-control (7) Max Range: 48,000 km TS: 12000 km/s 79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1 (7) Total Power Output 28.35 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Active Search Sensor MR1-R1 (1) GPS 16 Range 1.3m km MCR 139k km Resolution 1
Furious Type B class Cruiser 10,000 tons 289 Crew 1360.04 BP TCS 200 TH 653 EM 0
3265 km/s Armour 4-41 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 5 PPV 53.97
Maint Life 2.35 Years MSP 425 AFR 160% IFR 2.2% 1YR 105 5YR 1574 Max Repair 138.72 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 9 months Flight Crew Berths 1
Hangar Deck Capacity 500 tons Magazine 90
326.4 EP (HS32) Ion Stardrive (2) Power 326.4 Fuel Use 31.71% Signature 326.4 Exp 8%
Fuel Capacity 190,000 Litres Range 10.8 billion km (38 days at full power)
Twin Barrelled Pulse Laser Turret (7x2) Range 48,000km TS: 12000 km/s Power 6-4 RM 3 ROF 10 3 3 3 2 0 0 0 0 0 0
PDFC Fire-control (7) Max Range: 48,000 km TS: 12000 km/s 79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1 (7) Total Power Output 28.35 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Active Search Sensor MR1-R1 (1) GPS 16 Range 1.3m km MCR 139k km Resolution 1None of these designs are optimised and could perhaps be changed to tweak some numbers here and there, but I believe they roughly show the differences in real numbers.
So, here we have two ships with roughly equal in mission payload, range and maintenance. Where they differ is in cost, fuel efficiency and speed.
Model A has an advantage of +10% speed for a drawback of -6.5% cost and -37% fuel efficiency.
I presume, that in any way we scale the ships up or down in size the difference will be roughly the same. The difference in cost can vary, though depending on, how much resources go into the mission tonnage of the ship. But it will likely be somewhere around 5-10%.
My question is... how much is it worth to pay for more speed and how important is it?!?
I usually like cost efficiency over speed on the grounds of refit cost/time, less investment into retooling of shipyards, cost of expanding/maintaining the fuel industry. I believe this will pay for more ships and mission tonnage in the end.. but... sometimes the speed of your ships can mean more than an infinity number of mission tonnage, so, the questions stands... what should the price be on a ships speed?
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earlier this thread you talked about 25 %
Because it was for a different ship with different weaponry, requirements and mission... ::)
Have you already forgotten that we are the ones saying that each ship has it's own optimal solution, and you are the one claiming that somewhere 45-50% and low engine power is always best regardless of situation?
Or here even above 50% ( which is why my first example had 60% engines ).
unless you're somehow size restricted (fighters, missiles) - the optimum ship design always consists of 50-66 % engine. it's boring.
For me the optimal can be anywhere between 20% and 50% depending on what the ship needs to do!
unless you want to discuss if the optimum engine space is not 50 % but 45 %, but that would require you to agree with my basic assumption in first place.
I already agreed with you that 45-50% can be an optimum engine space ratio for certain civilian designs or designs where fuel efficiency is more important then all other factors. But for military ship that is not really the case unless they are optimized for carrying munitions with minimal fueluse ( and need to be military simply to fit magazines ).
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For me the optimal can be anywhere between 20% and 50% depending on what the ship needs to do!
This is very true. Any ship design that you don't intend to move around as much can easily benefit from an expensive engine with a high multiplier since it either give high speed or additional mission tonnage for roughly the same cost. The main drawback obviously is your fuel cost. You obviously can't take up too much space on your ships for fuel either, so it has to be a balance for your ability to protect a supply train.
I would also say that as technology develops you probably would increase the power and reduce the size of the engine to maximize the mission part of your ships.
As an empire develops you could probably keep the engine power very high in smaller ships such as frigates and destroyers, ships that you station close to the front, ships that act as the first line of defense such as corvettes and FAC are just extreme variants of those.
Ships that you usually station several system or even sectors away from the outer systems who tend to be large and fuel hungry would need more space for fuel and bigger engines for better fuel efficiency. These ships serves a different purpose and usually have to travel quite the distance to get to any hotspots. Depending on your game these ships might also perform some form of paroling of troubled areas from time to time, if they do you don't want them to burn half your fuel reserves in a couple of months in the field.
That is why there are no easy answer to this question on the importance on speed versus cost, fuel or flexibility.
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Ok, I know I said that commersial ships was uninteresting but I did some investigating into different engine to weight ratio on freighters.
I use Ion technology engines and two settings, x0.5 and x0.3 power settings... The freighters carry one standard cargo module, that is 25000 ton cargo capacity and all engines are 50HS engines, no point using smaller engines than that on larger commercial ships. All the ships use a 250.000 litre tank module and one cargo handling module. In reality you might optimise the design more these are just for a good reference point.
On the .5 power setting I get the following values
FI=Fuel Index, which mean how efficient it burns fuel (for cargo mass carried) in comparison with the other ships, higher is better.
CI=How efficient the ship carry cargo in relation to its build cost and speed, higher is better.
A: 10xEngines, 2900km/s, 1050BP, 56FI, 69CI, 51.100t
B: 5xEngines, 1940km/s, 617BP, 75FI, 78CI, 38.700t
C: 2xEngines, 967km/s, 358BP, 94FI, 68CI, 31.000t
For the .3 power setting I get...
A: 12xEngines, 1911km/s, 612BP, 180FI, 78CI, 56.500t
B: 4xEngines, 997km/s, 3287BP, 280FI, 75CI, 36.100t
C: 2xEngines, 580km/s, 255BP, 340FI, 57CI, 31.000t
My finding is that for Ion tech engines you should have about 2000km/s speed on your freighter for long range delivery to maximize cargo carrying efficiency but slower 1000km/s on shorter trips. The reason is that we do not include load/offload time in these calculations and in shorter trips such as delivery within the same system loading and offloading will take a considerable time of a ships time spent rather than travel. Also, slower ships will save a considerable amount of fuel, so building ships slower will only lower the cargo efficiency in a minor way sometimes not at all but will save you fuel, you just have to build more of them.
There are generally not a problem building many freighters since they build so quickly anyway, especially of you divert a small percentage of industry to construct their engines in advance if time is important to you.
Although, the cargo efficiency between these two engine types pretty much remains the same, using another engine just reduce your fuel usage, more or less.
You can't apply this on, say cryo ships, because cryo modules are MUCH more expensive than cargo modules. They require a completely different strategic approach to designing an efficient ship.
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Freighters also scale up pretty nice in size... here is the x0.5 C version scaled up five times...
10xEngines, 979km/s, 1428BP, 95FI, 86CI, 153.000t
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Any ship design that you don't intend to move around as much can easily benefit from an expensive engine with a high multiplier since it either give high speed or additional mission tonnage for roughly the same cost.
*sigh* i thought we had covered that already... higher power engines you do NOT give you additional mission tonnage for the same cost. they make your ships more expensive. the only benefit of higher power engines is a small reduction in total ship size. you posted these results yourself in the other thread! (see also my next post below where i'm quoting your designs)
My finding is that for Ion tech engines you should have about 2000km/s speed on your freighter for long range delivery to maximize cargo carrying efficiency but slower 1000km/s on shorter trips.
the difference in CI from 2000km/s to 1000 kms/s is less than 5 % for 50 % more fuel needed. i see no reason to use 2000 km/s engines for freighters while you have ion drive technology. but no matter what speed you prefer, you'll always be better off using lower power engines...
power x0.5:
B: 5xEngines, 1940km/s, 617BP, 75FI, 78CI, 38.700t
C: 2xEngines, 967km/s, 358BP, 94FI, 68CI, 31.000t
power x0.3:
A: 12xEngines 0.3, 1911km/s, 612BP, 180FI, 78CI, 56.500t
B: 4xEngines 0.3, 997km/s, 3287BP, 280FI, 75CI, 36.100t
this shows very well the balancing problem from higher to lower power engines. there is no point in using a x0.5 power engine when you can achieve a better result using the x0.3 engines.
that's why in this thread i suggest to change the balance among engines with different power levels in a way that makes all of them useful!
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you are the one claiming that somewhere 45-50% and low engine power is always best regardless of situation?
not always, but usually. if i said 50-66 % before, i revoke that. clarification: overhead (armor, crew, engineering spaces) is included in the size %. a side benefit of this method is more total armor and HTK.
if you have less than 40 % engines (from 40-45 it should be possible but the margin might be too small) you can usually improve your design (cheaper, less fuel needed and/or faster) by dedicationg more tonnage to lower power engines in return for a small increase in total ship size. so far you and Jorgen_CAB posted designs that fullfilled this requirement and in both cases it worked. so far i did not see an example that didn't work.
from the other thread:
Iowa (A) class Cruiser 10,000 tons 267 Crew 1454 BP TCS 200 TH 720 EM 0
3600 km/s Armour 5-41 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 5 PPV 53.46
Maint Life 2.52 Years MSP 500 AFR 145% IFR 2% 1YR 110 5YR 1646 Max Repair 120 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 9 months Flight Crew Berths 26
Hangar Deck Capacity 1000 tons Magazine 150
240 EP (HS20) Ion Drive (3) Power 240 Fuel Use 48% Signature 240 Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 400,000 Litres Range 15.0 billion km (48 days at full power)
Iowa (B3) class Cruiser 10,850 tons 274 Crew 1433.13 BP TCS 217 TH 796 EM 0
3668 km/s Armour 5-43 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 6 PPV 53.46
Maint Life 2.53 Years MSP 495 AFR 156% IFR 2.2% 1YR 108 5YR 1613 Max Repair 112.71 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 9 months Flight Crew Berths 26
Hangar Deck Capacity 1000 tons Magazine 150
265.2 EP (HS26) Ion Drive (3) Power 265.2 Fuel Use 29.57% Signature 265.2 Exp 8%
Fuel Capacity 270,000 Litres Range 15.1 billion km (47 days at full power)
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*sigh* i thought we had covered that already... higher power engines you do NOT give you additional mission tonnage for the same cost. they make your ships more expensive. the only benefit of higher
High powered engines do not scale in cost as low powered engines does. So if you increase the power mod from 1 to say 1.25 but still use the same total power output you get less engines tonnage for the same cost, so now you can add more mission tonnage to compensate or just get a slightly smaller ship with higher speed if you prefer that. That is what I meant with that comment. Yes, a warship with a 0.85 power setting will be a few % cheaper and use less fuel but will also be slower given the same tonnage ships.
Your biggest problem is that you keep increase the size of the ship and still want to compare them, but then you MUST be able to redesign all other ships to be able to meet that tonnage as well. So, you can only compare ships with the SAME tonnage. My examples were good examples to show that the ship would become bloated and not legal for comparison...
I agree that lower powered engines on commercial ships is always wanted if fuel and build economy is all that matters to you. But in a real setting speed can actually also be important even in a freighter, but perhaps only on a few. Sometimes it is more important to get some place first than it is to do it efficiently.
I don't see how the current system is flawed because more research heavy technology is clearly better then easier technology. I refer to the power settings of commercial engines now, on military ships it's not the same as we have proved to you over and over.
Don't argue that you can just increase the size of the ship to get something "better", that is not true... all designs MUST (again) be compared with the same tonnage. If you have Naval Yards/maintenance facilities for 10.000t you can't build ships that are bigger than that. Doing something else will need a change on overall doctrine change. The same go for smaller ships. If you have five 6000t Naval Yards all with 12 slipways and most of your outer colonies have 6000t maintenance facilities to accommodate smaller destroyer squadrons. You can't just expand them with a few hundred tons on a whim, and even if you did you now can produce ANY kind if design using that tonnage, so now you can pack more high powered engines in there to make the ship even faster if you like.
The two ships you just showed that I did is a good example of two designs that are in practice impossible to compare if you are relegated to 10.000t naval yards.
Please present two 10.000t ships where a low powered engine with an *.85 powered engine is as fast as a *1 engine design (say 25% total tonnage engine) and the same mission tonnage with a mission range of around 10-20b km and using starting technology from a 500m people start. I think that is a good strategy for comparison where most people will have full understanding of the numbers involved.
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*sigh* i thought we had covered that already... higher power engines you do NOT give you additional mission tonnage for the same cost. they make your ships more expensive. the only benefit of higher power engines is a small reduction in total ship size.
It really depends on what you mean "small reduction". Rather than using some made up test designs, I have tried to replicate the results on ships I actually used in my previous campaign, which were generally larger than those shown here (20 000T - 70 000T) and any attempt to use less powerful engines usually resulted in a massive increase in size even if the costs remained lower.
But that actually doesn't matter. For all instances and purposes the entire discussion is meaningless, because our two sides are discussing things from entirely different perspective. You're just concerned with the cost vs speed ratio, completely disregarding any role-playing. Me and other people don't care about those numbers - we only care how it fits within the framework of our stories. If we were to compere this discussion to apples, you would argue that apples are healthy while we would argue that they're tasty. We're talking about two completely different things from completely different points of view.
That does not mean we're right of course - but I think we have the ultimate arbiter on our side, namely the creator of Aurora. Why? Because Steve always role-plays his campaigns, which means that the ability to put a ship into production now (which means size restrictions) rather than after the next round of shipyard expansion is very important. Go ahead and read his NATO vs. Soviets campaign to see how putting a ship into service now, even if the ship will be scrapped in six months due to being useless, can have an enormous impact for strategic balance between powers. (The link to the campaign is: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/board,112.0.html (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/board,112.0.html))
Long story short you're right that you can decrease the cost of a ship by putting a lower powered engine with the only drawback being larger size (although I'm not sure this holds true for larger vessels), but the thing is no one cares because in our role playing games everything works fine. If you want us to agree with you than you have to show us that the cost per mission tonnage (total ship cost/total tonnage of the armament) decreases if we use lower powered engines within the ship of the same size. Otherwise you're basically talking to a wall, and in this particular case I have no problem being considered a brick.
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Long story short you're right that you can decrease the cost of a ship by putting a lower powered engine with the only drawback being larger size (although I'm not sure this holds true for larger vessels), but the thing is no one cares because in our role playing games everything works fine. If you want us to agree with you than you have to show us that the cost per mission tonnage (total ship cost/total tonnage of the armament) decreases if we use lower powered engines within the ship of the same size. Otherwise you're basically talking to a wall, and in this particular case I have no problem being considered a brick.
Yes, this is what I have been trying to say but perhaps in not as good words...
However... I might still agree with letsdance that I would in many instances favour better economy for some reduced tactical flexibility... here is a good example.
Resolution Type-A class Missile Destroyer 10,000 tons 275 Crew 1357 BP TCS 200 TH 600 EM 0
3000 km/s Armour 3-41 Shields 0-0 Sensors 8/16/0/0 Damage Control Rating 5 PPV 48
Maint Life 2.58 Years MSP 424 AFR 160% IFR 2.2% 1YR 90 5YR 1345 Max Repair 150 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 9 months Flight Crew Berths 8
Hangar Deck Capacity 250 tons Magazine 736
300 EP (HS25) Ion Drive (2) Power 300 Fuel Use 52.5% Signature 300 Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 400,000 Litres Range 13.7 billion km (52 days at full power)
Size 4 Missile Launcher (12) Missile Size 4 Rate of Fire 40
Missile Fire Control FC69-R100 (2) Range 69.1m km Resolution 100
Size 4 Anti-ship Missile (206) Speed: 24,000 km/s End: 43.3m Range: 62.3m km WH: 6 Size: 4 TH: 104/62/31
Active Search Sensor MR64-R100 (1) GPS 8000 Range 64.0m km Resolution 100
Thermal Sensor TH1-8 (1) Sensitivity 8 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 8m km
EM Detection Sensor EM2-16 (1) Sensitivity 16 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 16m km
Resolution Type-B class Missile Destroyer 10,000 tons 270 Crew 1233.58 BP TCS 200 TH 595 EM 0
2975 km/s Armour 3-41 Shields 0-0 Sensors 8/16/0/0 Damage Control Rating 5 PPV 48
Maint Life 2.57 Years MSP 405 AFR 152% IFR 2.1% 1YR 86 5YR 1292 Max Repair 119.04 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 9 months Flight Crew Berths 8
Hangar Deck Capacity 250 tons Magazine 592
297.6 EP (HS31) Ion Drive (2) Power 297.6 Fuel Use 27.65% Signature 297.6 Exp 8%
Fuel Capacity 210,000 Litres Range 13.7 billion km (53 days at full power)
Size 4 Missile Launcher (12) Missile Size 4 Rate of Fire 40
Missile Fire Control FC69-R100 (2) Range 69.1m km Resolution 100
Size 4 Anti-ship Missile (206) Speed: 24,000 km/s End: 43.3m Range: 62.3m km WH: 6 Size: 4 TH: 104/62/31
Active Search Sensor MR64-R100 (1) GPS 8000 Range 64.0m km Resolution 100
Thermal Sensor TH1-8 (1) Sensitivity 8 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 8m km
EM Detection Sensor EM2-16 (1) Sensitivity 16 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 16m km
Type-A
* Take 2.2 (2.0) years to build (-)
* Burn almost twice the amount of fuel (-)
* Can shoot 15(12) salvoes of missiles (+)
Type-B
* Take 2.0 (2.2) years to build (+)
* Burn almost half the amount of fuel (+)
* Can shoot 12(15) salvoes of missiles (-)
In essence the cost is 90BP per missile salvo on Type-A and 102BP on type-B. 26000 litre of mission fuel per missile salvo on Type-A and 17500 litre on Type-B. If that help anyone...
If you then would like to lower the BP per missile salvo fired (or volume of each salvo) you can increase the power of the engines and fit smaller engines and gain mission tonnage but seriously increase mission fuel usage per missile fired in combat.
I would probably go for Type-B since I value economy over fire-power in this instance. But in order to get the same fire-power I need more resources and time. As time go by and your engines get more and more fuel efficient it will get less and less incentive to use extra fuel efficient engines since you are going to use much less space on your ship for fuel. At this early stage you are still using relatively large mass for fuel and even at relatively short ship mission ranges fuel efficient engines are economically very strong.
If you take the same ships with just two levels more of fuel economy you will just start loosing too much mission space for such engines to be interesting, unless you are prepared to compromise your speed as well. Personally I choose slight speed reduction on larger ships to get more mission tonnage and cheaper ships that are also faster/cheaper to retrofit.
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@Haji: if you just care about roleplaying, there is no sense in discussing game mechanics. but then you shouldn't care either way. seeing how much thought Steve puts into mechanics, i do think it matters to him.
@Jorgen_CAB since design B is 10 % cheaper, we assume we have 10 % more of it. that means i can fire 10 % more missiles for the first 12 volleys. then i'll run out, while you still have 3 volleys with your design A. but your whole advantage of more volleys is gone, because you already lost at least 10 % more ships than i did, reducing your total number of missiles - if you lose just 10 % of your missile load you're at the same total number of missiles that i had. the higher damage per time is a big advantage that you did not consider at all.
if you don't want to calculate 10 % more ships, you'd have to take into account the timing advantage. i destroy your planet while you still have 0.2 years left to build your fleet... that's not calculable of course, but the above example with higher ship number is.
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@Haji: if you just care about roleplaying, there is no sense in discussing game mechanics. but then you shouldn't care either way. seeing how much thought Steve puts into mechanics, i do think it matters to him.
You can't discuss mechanics without considering "realistic" conditions in a game, otherwise if you end up changing them you might throw the real balance out the window. In realistic terms, size for example, IS a valid restriction for building or designing ships. You can't expand your yards indefinitely (population, wealth, resources are a few limitations), that is simply not a realistic proposition. Even if you did all possible designs should be able to utilize and be designed for that new size restriction and you just end up where you began. ;)
@Jorgen_CAB since design B is 10 % cheaper, we assume we have 10 % more of it. that means i can fire 10 % more missiles for the first 12 volleys. then i'll run out, while you still have 3 volleys with your design A. but your whole advantage of more volleys is gone, because you already lost at least 10 % more ships than i did, reducing your total number of missiles - if you lose just 10 % of your missile load you're at the same total number of missiles that i had. the higher damage per time is a big advantage that you did not consider at all.
It does not really matter because you just assume that there are no point-defences and point defences can easily have different capabilities to deal with either volley volume or total missile volume. So, taken out of context one is not necessarily better than the other in that regard. If you like volley volume you could just add more launchers to the Type-A instead of more missiles... simply, it does not matter, it was just an example to show a difference. Tactical application is completely different and heavily dependent on the context.
if you don't want to calculate 10 % more ships, you'd have to take into account the timing advantage. i destroy your planet while you still have 0.2 years left to build your fleet... that's not calculable of course, but the above example with higher ship number is.
Now your just being childish, and I'm pretty sure you know it. I'm not willing to sink to the level of playing I shot you, no you didn't, level. ;)
I only presented two ships that give you different options.
Type-A give you a higher volume of fire per BP. Or you can make Type-B that will give you a better economy over time with lower fuel usage and easier to retrofit the engines. In general I like option B, but not everyone take that option and it is a valid choice not to do so. If you are hard pressed to get ships out for an imminent war you might want Type-A because it give you a higher volume of fire in a shorter time, even if a single Type-B is built slightly faster.
Unlike you I do NOT put any direct emphasis on what is right or wrong, I only try to explain that you can choose either for different tactical/strategic reasons.
You also missed the part about future retrofit of these ships. As you research better fuel economy Type-A will just be able to increase its volume of fire more and more in relation to Type-B as the fuel carried will be reduced. That might also be a reason to go for Type-A if that is important to you.
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I'm willing to agree that when you look at a ships mission range/speed/fuel economy/production cost you can sometimes find an optimum engine power settings for warships.
Basically, if you give a warship a certain speed/range as a mission critical constant you can find an optimum engine type with the best optimum weight/cost/fuel for that speed/range. That basically mean that if you want ships to have a long mission deployment range you are better of with low powered engines since they give you better speed/cost/fuel economy. But as you decrease the mission range and/or increase speed on ships and use much smaller percentage of the ship for fuel this advantage will disappear and eventually be less useful and in advantage of more higher powered engines, but of course at the cost of worse fuel efficiency, which often are not a problem for ships that rarely move and are intent to combat over small distances.
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It does not really matter because you just assume that there are no point-defences and point defences can easily have different capabilities to deal with either volley volume or total missile volume.
any type of point defense will move the equation to my favor, because 10 % more ships means exactly the same number and volleys of missiles, and then another 10 % on top of that.
But as you decrease the mission range and/or increase speed on ships and use much smaller percentage of the ship for fuel this advantage will disappear and eventually be less useful and in advantage of more higher powered engines
yes and i would prefer if this advantage would be more significant. the examples we used so far had a mission range of 10-15b km. that's not very short, but also not long (just enough to jump out of the system and maybe move around a bit, then you have to go refuelling) and i never saw a real benefit when using a higher power engine.
it would make more sense if you needed a higher power engine to achieve a higher speed with your ship. even when you want a long mission range.
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any type of point defense will move the equation to my favor, because 10 % more ships means exactly the same number and volleys of missiles, and then another 10 % on top of that.
Why do you keep arguing over pointless details?
If you have more tonnage to add stuff per BP you just have, no point in arguing what it is, however you like to distribute it does not matter. You can fit more launchers on the Type-A versus Type-B if you feel that is important. In this particular instance you probably could have mounted two more launchers on Type-A and still have a few more missiles on board.
Not that you are right about volume of fire... higher volley volume is not always better, sometimes PD is so strong that you have to just out shoot it with total volume, so it does not matter. Unless you know for sure how big volleys you need it is always a gamble.
yes and i would prefer if this advantage would be more significant. the examples we used so far had a mission range of 10-15b km. that's not very short, but also not long (just enough to jump out of the system and maybe move around a bit, then you have to go refuelling) and i never saw a real benefit when using a higher power engine.
it would make more sense if you needed a higher power engine to achieve a higher speed with your ship. even when you want a long mission range.
Most fleets will obviously have a support fleet trail it on missions with tankers, colliers and supply ships. You only put enough fuel to keep your support ships at a safe distance from the fighting. In my experience I rarely need more than 10-15b km on a ship for actual combat manoeuvres. On some ships even less than that. In the beginning I keep my ship ranges even shorter and as my fuel technology progress I usually add some range even though I reduce the total fuel carried. Though, most of my campaigns have so many different constraints that it is nigh impossible to build optimised ships.
Ships designed for scouting is an entirely different matter, here you will need more fuel and so a better engine design would be desired. Although, in reality, you are limited in how many engine designs you can have and sometimes you have to have an engine that can do both, so you end up with an engine doing nothing well.
If you cranked up the fuel technology to *0.5 and at the same time reduced the range to 10-12 billion km the Type-A would get much more tonnage to play with mission type stuff. If you then put in a say *1.25 powered engine you will get even more. Even if the ship get more expensive overall you pay less cost per ton of mission critical tonnage. You will get a very fuel hungry ship, but if your empire have the fuel reserves when you need it it is fine to do so.
If you want to build a larger long range cruiser, meant to cruise alone and at long ranges. You perhaps want it to have a range of 35 billion km but you are constrained at 25000t. You might want to design an engine that let you have a decent speed and fuel economy, but you also must have room to put in all the mission critical stuff that you need. Designing such a ship will probably be a challenge since you might need to decide on something you will have to cut back on, such as speed, range or mission tonnage. You might even decide that cost is not important, utility trump cost in this instance. You also might be constrained in how much research you can divert to designing components that you don't have, such as a new engine.
All these are real consideration during play role-play or no role-play... the only time there are no real limits is if there are no threats and you have all the time in the world to do as you please. But then you really don't need to build that many warship anyway, so why bother. ;)
So... while I agree that there are some optimised designs that you can build with range being a major factor in engine design it might not always be practical. If you have an 8000t destroyer that has a range of 9 billion km who uses a standard *1 engine and you like to build an 8000t scout ship with a range of 40b km you might not have the time or wish to develop a new engine. You just use the one you have and give the ship an unreasonable amount of fuel. It is a suboptimal build but a trade-off you sometimes have to do.
I'm NOT saying one strategy is better than the other, as before, I'm just saying there are different strategic advantages for different objectives in the game.
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Why do you keep arguing over pointless details?
*lol* YOU started arguing this detail.
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So... 10% more ships... that fire 20% fewer missiles...
Seems like a losing situation in the long run when massing the 2, although, if theyre gonna be heading on a long range patrol, version B might be a tad better for the efficiency. Against a strong amm defense, type a pulls ahead simply due to 3 extra volleys. While the "10%" more type b would pull ahead in a heavy gun pd setup.
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Yes... the thing I "argued" is that one type is better for one thing and the other in something else.
Why I felt letsdance argued over "pointless" details was because it seemed to be contest and that my example could be compared in an isolated very restricted such contest without considering that Type A could as well have used more launchers per BP so the very argument would be reversed for the exact same reason type B would be "better". You could essentially choose between deeper magazines or more launchers.
The thing is that there are no "perfect" ship configuration for all types of ships, no single solutions for all the different mission types. If you want a short range fast ship you build a high powered engine that is fuel hungry, if you want a longer ranged ship you use a more fuel efficient engine, this is quite logical and valid points. But this is only practically true if you can afford to research all the techs needed for all the different ships that you use. It is practically impossible to optimise all components on all your ships without some compromises at some point. Unless you have unlimited time to research and no real opposition to speak off.
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Well its 1 thing I've learned from years of 4Xs, especially the good ole "Space Empires 3" (too bad it don't run on modern computers)
theres no such thing as the perfect ship. Just the 1 thats good for this situation.
Though it really only seems to matter in the 5000-10000t range. Above 10kt, you're better off just going with 50HS engines, and cranking the power factor to get faster ships. And sub 5000t... stuff gets a little crazy because of size limitations. (though my 3500-4000t corvettes run off of a 1.5x-2x 50HS engine, 25HTK keeps them flying well after a couple good hits) And cause most smaller ships need to squeeze as much power out of their engineHS/TotalHS as they can.
Of course this whole thread is about efficiency... But I can't warrant just throwing more and more engines onto my freighters. Even though its cheap to expand your shipyard, after the first couple freighters are out, and colony ship to get the civilian contractors rolling (unless someone can tell me how to get them to start building ships without me already doing a ship of the same role, they seem to do nothing, until I build at least 1 cargo ship/colonyship)
After that, the only civilian ships that get turned out are geosurvey ships (kept as small as possible, and often end up being military designs due to passive sensors/CIWS, also often identical to my gravsurvey ships) And mining ships... which are also often military designs, and fuel transports... which are also milspec... and. Yeah I usually don't bother building more than 2 Civilian Shipyards. Only reason I have 6 of them total right now is because I stole 4 of them from NPRs with tugs. After the first handful of freighters and such I build, I either build all my stuff as a milspec design, or let the civilian shipping handle it. And expanding military shipyards is expensive and SLOW.
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This is also why speaking of optimization is so hard because it always comes down to WHAT it is you are trying to optimise. Large engines for example are not good for research optimization because they are very expensive to research for a small benefit in fuel economy. Larger engines instead of smaller engines with the same power setting also need more engineering sections for the same maintenance clock and more MSP to fix maintenance problems and battle damage in relation. That is why it's never crystal clear one option is better that the other, unless the only optimization criteria you are interested in are fuel economy.
If you, for example, are going to build... as you suggested... one 2x 50HS engine for a corvette at 4000t and then another say a 1x 50HS engine for your 10000t ships, perhaps a 1x 30HS for your frigates to optimise fuel economy you spend 11000RP at Ion engine tech, while you could reduce that to two engine types with say one small powerful 10HS and one slightly bigger say 25HS and only use about 2700RP. You loose some fuel efficiency and that is about it.
Personally I try to strike a balance on the cost of RP research, fuel economy, ship performance and production capacity. Usually this mean that I keep a two or three different 1HS engines, perhaps one or two 10-15HS engines with different power/stealth settings and then a bigger less powerful engine for ships in the 10000t+ region. If I have any really big ships I might go with a HS50 engine, but only if research is plenty enough and I'm not behind in technology from other factions.
I practically use the same logic for all types of ship components from weapons, sensors, fire-controls etc...
Again, I don't mean either choice is better... but I really think that all discussion need to bring forth all the benefit AND drawbacks of each of these optimization strategies, not just present them as the "only" true option for perfect performance. ;)
I also actually agree with letsdance overall mentality that low powered engines is a good choice for ship engines based on them having a huge industrial, research and logistical advantage over the more expensive engines. As long as you understand the drawbacks and then learn how you might overcome them to hopefully make you stronger than the opponent is important.
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unless someone can tell me how to get them to start building ships without me already doing a ship of the same role, they seem to do nothing, until I build at least 1 cargo ship/colonyship
The critera is that you need to have Nuclear Thermal Engine research and send some infrastructure to a colony. You now only need to wait for your cvilians to spawn a colonyship and start colonizing. Obviously you need cryo transport researched as well. So you will need at least one cargo ship with a 5000t cargo hold at the minimum. Small freighters is also good for mineral transportation since mass drivers cant transport minerals through jump points. You might also want them to get minerals from asteroids where you don't care to place any mass-drivers.
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^ Like I need to ship some to another colony myself? Or jsut setup teh civilian contract? Cause I've had a contract set for years after NT engines, with no change.
Also if you know, whats accomplished by "subsidizing" the shipping line?
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^ Like I need to ship some to another colony myself? Or jsut setup teh civilian contract? Cause I've had a contract set for years after NT engines, with no change.
Also if you know, whats accomplished by "subsidizing" the shipping line?
Shipping lines use wealth to build ships, if you give them wealth they will simply build more ships. And as I said, in order to get a shipping line to build ships you need a colony with at least some infrastructure. After this they will build ships, once they build at least one colony ship (random which ship they build) they will start transporting population to this colony and things will take off from there.
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That info would be really nice on the wiki.
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Try subsiding your company with 100k or so, you will see couple ships after that :)
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I do agree that there is something that feels a bit wonky sometimes in the tonnage/power/fuel consumption equation. But let us approach this systematically by breaking down what common ship types you're going to build:
Military ships (warships):
Not a problem, usually military ship need to be FAST, and size is important. You will almost never want a slow military ship for a variety of reasons (range of engagement, actually catching up enemies, deploying the ships where you need them to be). To be honest, I often use engine multiplier higher than one. Speed is king, and let's not forget that as said before, increasing the shipyard size IS a problem, not to mention retooling times etc. Also, if you need more range you use a fuel transport.
The only issues when you do not want a fast warships are either when you're roleplaying (and then you cannot complain about mechanics, because you're purposefully building a NOT optimized ship), or when speed is not important at ALL. And in those cases you're much better off NOT putting engines on a ship. Just build an immovable weapon/fighter platform, and tug it where you need it with a civilian tug. This has a number of advantages, namely: You can build fuel efficient tugs and so save fuel, the tugs (and thus the speed) can be upgraded without the need of touching the military part of the ship, you have a LOT more space for weapons/ammo/systems, you spend less to build and research the military ships etc.
Military ships (other):
This includes ships that are not warships, but are classified as military ships. Grav surveys, scout/sensor ships, colliers and the like. All these ships needs either a decent speed, or a good speed (if they need to move with/behind the main war fleet). As such if they need to move with the fleet, or move fast for another reason (a fast scout to find enemies) they will have engines similar to a warship, and so with a high multiplier. If they don't, then I usually stick to 50% commercial engines to save fuel and have a good range while still having an acceptable speed. Even before ion engine tech, this is usually good enough range/speed for grav surveys and the like, because you generally scout ahead of time and such.
Civilian ships:
The only general thing is that you need to have the necessary range for your mission. So, at very low tech levels this might mean you change something in order to gain more range. But even just from ion engine, this is no longer a problem usually. Let's see case by case.
Tugs: one of my favorite ship designs. Tugs generally are 90% engine, 10% fuel space or something, so nothing wrong with the current model. Just build the most fuel efficient engine you can, and add as many as you need to obtain your ideal tug. No other considerations are required, you generally do not care how long it takes to move the tugged ship. If for some reason you need a fast tug instead, just make a tug with all 50% commercial engines on it, and you're done.
Terraformers, sorium harvesters, gate builders: if you're putting engines on these ships, you are doing it wrong. These ships needs to move rarely. Actually, terraformers and sorium harvesters need to move once every few years at most. You do not want to put engines on these. In order to put engines on these ships you need to increase their size immensely, which in turn means more cost, more fuel used/immobilized, bigger shipyard needed etc. Just build them as immobile, engine-less platforms. Cheap, faster to build. Apply tugs as needed to move them around :)
Cargo ships and colony ships: if you're doing it right, you will need FEW of these. And often, 0 colony ships alltogether. Unless you purposefully killed the civilian sector, what's the point? The civilians can and will move all of these for you at basically no costs. You may need a few, in order to move minerals or installations at critical times. In that case speed is generally important, so you stick to 50% commercial engines anyway
Geological survey ships, team transport ships: speed generally matters, so use 50% commercial engines. If it does not (example, far away system you want to geosurvey for the next decade expansion plan), then you use the most fuel efficient engine you can build. Let me point out in these cases I'd never add more engines to "optimize costs etc" as the opener posted. Why would I? If I do not plan to move into a system for at LEAST 10 year, it makes no difference to me if I take one or three years to survey it. Oh and about the team transport ships.... You use them right? You're not "cheaters" that magically teleport teams around, right? :)
That covers the most common ships types I think. So after looking this through, I'd say that the current system, while not perfect, is not problematic because you generally do not want to optimize fuel cost/speed by adding more engines and thus increasing size. Of course, if you do not like to use tugs/weapon platforms, or if you do not like to use civilian shipping lines for your needs, then it becomes more problematic. But in those cases you're not really "optimizing" the game anyway, so I do not see the problem there...
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I would agree with what you said and that "optimizing" ship design is a matter of doctrine rather than any specific parameter.
I might perhaps correct a few things...
Just because you "role-play" does not mean you can't "optimize" ship construction. It just means that under a certain set of new rules those "optimization" might look different. There are no "right" way to play the game and by definition there are no "right" way of optimizing ships in any particular way.
This is especially true to ship speed because there is always a balance between scouting ability, speed and fire-power. By concentrating more in one area you loose out on the other for the same industry/resource/time invested into it. So, by definition speed is no more important than any other part of a fleet. If you can manage high speed large capital ships with all the downside that entails such as higher research/fuel cost and more time to build ships etc and still keep up with fire-power and scouting ability it is all fine.
I have experienced all these problems so many times in my multi-national games and most powers that build the cheapest and yet flexible fleet will usually get out on top. They generally rely on what technologies they have and how they implemented their doctrines to take full advantage of them. Many times just retooling of shipyards too much could hamper an empire to the brink of catastrophe when they can't get their new ships out in time for a conflict, this is especially detrimental with ship design that uses research intensive technology. The motto is that its better to have a few mediocre ships now than several perfect one when its all over.
Games where you play with a unified Earth where enemies usually are far in between and a long way from Earth is a very different beast and will impact your doctrines and ability to "optimize" using different criteria, this has nothing to do with role-play. Constraints and optimization will differ based on circumstances and setting of any campaign, and no one is more "right".
In my current campaign it would not be feasible to build large high powered engines on the basis that they simply are too costly to research and fuel, unless you opt to research a very small engine and then use numerous on a larger hull, thus decreasing the fuel efficiency even further. When a single large warship can drain 5% of the total fuel production in a year in just 30-60 days of flight you think twice about what kind of engine you put on those ships.
Once an empire spans over a greater distance and both population, industry and technology are more developed increasing the power on engines for larger ships will be more reasonable from an economical and military standpoint.
When military budget have to pass through congress and compete against more "none destructive" policies through role-play you can't say you are not optimizing the designs, you are changing the rules of the setting in which the optimizing is occurring. There are simply no right "Mechanics" in the game but the ones you allow to be used, so we should be careful about saying that "you are playing it wrong" kind if statement. ;)
When it comes to Tugs if you "abuse" the game mechanics you should never ever build engines on your ships at all but rather use tugs for everything, even using efficient tugs to drag around more inefficient tugs because commercial ships are "free" once you built them. Which in and of itself is abusing game mechanic in my view. In order to balance things I never allow tugs to use more than half its maximum speed as a means of rationalize that they can't be used on military ships. They can still be used to move military ships long distances for a fraction of the fuel cost though, but I would only allow that for moving ships from one maintenance facility to another using a skeleton crew on the warship.
I would certainly agree that putting engines on fuel harvesters, mining stations and gate builders is unnecessary and unreasonable from an economical standpoint in most circumstances. I think people in general do it so they don't have to go through the manual labour of shuttling the tugs around to tow stuff. It's not because people don't understand they are more economical to use.
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Just because you "role-play" does not mean you can't "optimize" ship construction. It just means that under a certain set of new rules those "optimization" might look different. There are no "right" way to play the game and by definition there are no "right" way of optimizing ships in any particular way.
I did not mean "role play", in my post, as a normal game in which I play normally but care about my characters and give myself reasonable house rules. I did not explain myself though, so my bad. What i mean by role play is: giving myself some rules I want to role play no matter how unrealistic they are, and that can be really bad because obviously the ai does not follow them. For example, sometimes I play a "Beam only" game. Yes I know, the AI has missiles. No I don't use them. Yes, it's REAL bad :p
Another game I played a Romulan themed game. All of my ships HAD to be cloaked. All of them. ALL of them, no matter what. In fact I manually erased all shipping lines because the civs obviously did not have cloaked ships. THAT was real bad as well.
So this is what I meant by the fact that in these kind of games, optimization is not really important in the sense that you actually do not have the luxury of coming up with effective ships....
I have experienced all these problems so many times in my multi-national games and most powers that build the cheapest and yet flexible fleet will usually get out on top. They generally rely on what technologies they have and how they implemented their doctrines to take full advantage of them. Many times just retooling of shipyards too much could hamper an empire to the brink of catastrophe when they can't get their new ships out in time for a conflict, this is especially detrimental with ship design that uses research intensive technology. The motto is that its better to have a few mediocre ships now than several perfect one when its all over.
Games where you play with a unified Earth where enemies usually are far in between and a long way from Earth is a very different beast and will impact your doctrines and ability to "optimize" using different criteria, this has nothing to do with role-play. Constraints and optimization will differ based on circumstances and setting of any campaign, and no one is more "right".
In my current campaign it would not be feasible to build large high powered engines on the basis that they simply are too costly to research and fuel, unless you opt to research a very small engine and then use numerous on a larger hull, thus decreasing the fuel efficiency even further. When a single large warship can drain 5% of the total fuel production in a year in just 30-60 days of flight you think twice about what kind of engine you put on those ships.
Once an empire spans over a greater distance and both population, industry and technology are more developed increasing the power on engines for larger ships will be more reasonable from an economical and military standpoint.
As I have only played "unified Earth" games, and in fact conventional start only games, I am not well versed in the different problems that arise in a multi-national games. I agree that it makes sense that it's better to have crappy ships than no ship at all. And that cheap ships also look attractive, and that retooling can be an extreme problem in a close war.
Still I do not think this impact my point too much regarding the fact that military ships need to be "fast", where fast means "fast enough to at least defend my assets from the enemy fleets" regardless of the real speed number. Let's say a multi-nation game on sol, and you have 4 colonies. Unless you have a lot of impregnable defense stations everywhere, your fleet is a crucial asset to defend your planets. If the enemy fleets travel twice your speed, by the time you arrive your colonies will be no more. Yes, fuel consumption is a problem, I understand that. But losing your colonies is more so.
And back to the main point of the thread, in such a game where you cannot even retool for fear of losing the war, you would not do what the opening post suggests to illustrate letsdance opinion. No offense, but you would not use 2 25% 50HS engines instead of one 35% 50HS engine, cause that would require you to use a much bigger shipyard and you cannot afford that most likely. You'd go with an acceptable compromise in fuel efficiency/speed, not just choose the engine with the best possible fuel efficiency.
So to conclude, I understand what you mean here, and I agree, but still speed is a critical issue in a mobile fleet and most often it simply cannot be compromised with, at least for a movable fleet. In other cases, it's simply more efficient to build "space bases". If you can afford them of course.
When it comes to Tugs if you "abuse" the game mechanics you should never ever build engines on your ships at all but rather use tugs for everything, even using efficient tugs to drag around more inefficient tugs because commercial ships are "free" once you built them. Which in and of itself is abusing game mechanic in my view. In order to balance things I never allow tugs to use more than half its maximum speed as a means of rationalize that they can't be used on military ships. They can still be used to move military ships long distances for a fraction of the fuel cost though, but I would only allow that for moving ships from one maintenance facility to another using a skeleton crew on the warship.
I would certainly agree that putting engines on fuel harvesters, mining stations and gate builders is unnecessary and unreasonable from an economical standpoint in most circumstances. I think people in general do it so they don't have to go through the manual labour of shuttling the tugs around to tow stuff. It's not because people don't understand they are more economical to use.
To clarify, I most assuredly do not abuse tugs. I use them where they make sense. I do not tug my fleets in battle and then move the tugs away when the enemy come close, or anything like that. My tugs can and will move the following:
- Damaged ships
- Shipyards
- Terraformers, sorium harvesters, mining stations, gate buiders
- Defensive space bases (AKA immobile weapon platforms)
For defensive bases, they can ONLY be stationed either at jump points or at planets, but I do not allow them to be moved to enemy systems, unless the system is contested (I have a colony there). I also do not allow them to be towed without an escort fleet, because I maintain that a space station that is being towed is considered mothballed. That is, if I were to be attacked while moving a defensive base, it would NOT shoot back.
So, I do not think I abuse tugs. I can understand not wanting to bother with them, and so putting engines on everything. But it's not efficient and once again, in a truly close game (like a multi-empire starting system), you probably want to use every tool at your disposal, not just put engines on everything because it's not efficient.
P.S: I have this pet peeve of mine, that we can't build real space bases because from time to time they have to be overhauled. I think this is poorly implemented in aurora. I'm not saying it should be cost-free, but I'd really like to be able to build real, permanent starbases. For example, I would be fine with it if it was something like: You have to have, I don't know, 20% of the base spent in a special "deep space maintenance module", and that module uses maintenance supplies which you have to restock from time to time. I'd be fine with that, but no, from time to time you simply have too tow the bases back for overhaul... >_>
It really ruins the immersion. "Today, we christen the Evora starbase, a great testament to the advancements of our great nation. For ages to come, this mighty fortress will protect our borders against the incursion of the Arulean empire" ".... uhm no boss, actually we're due for maintenance back to earth in 8 years". Wait, what?
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I pretty much agree with all you said... :)
On the speed issue you are right that ships need a speed based on their mission critical use, whatever that might be. But both fire power and scouting ability is equally important so however you look at it you must strike a critical balance, unless you can maintain an advantage in all three fields.
For example, good scouting ability can lead to you being able to anticipate an enemy move in time to stop them, something speed in itself can never do. Fire-power can likewise stop an enemy where speed might only allow you to run away instead of fight. So, you always need to strike a fine balance between different priorities. But I do agree that main military ships speed will always be more important than fuel economy for most military ships.
And give us real space stations that can maintain themselves. I really think there should be three categories of things to build... PDC, ships and stations.
You can, however, build modular "space stations", small enough that you can use maintenance bases to provide maintenance for them, but only when stationed at planets.